24 other except that on the third step be- fore each door is a sign giving the rank and name of the occupant. The Com- mandant's home stands alone, a great yellow mansion on a knoll at the south- west corner of the Yard. Completed in 1807 by Commodore Isaac Chauncey, it is the oldest structure now on the grounds by at least fifty years and the only one that suggests the early days of the base. The Yard occupies historic ground. Much of it is literally built on the bones of several thousand Revolutionary pa- triots, whose remains have been a prob- lem to the Navy for many years. In 1 777, half a dozen British prison ships lay at anchor in a little bay which has since been filled in and is now part of the Navy Yard site. They were crowded with prisoners of war. There was little attempt at sanitation and the food was as bad as British government contrac- tors could make it. The Americans were allowed to come on deck for air during the day, but were forced below at night by guards shouting "Down, Rebels, down!" The hatches were then bat- tened over them and they were left to fester until morning. Those who died were buried in shallow sand graves or simply tossed overboard with weights on their feet. In 1805, a Brooklyn resident named Aygrill paid someone to gather whatever bones had been exposed by the action of the tide. Nothing further hap- pened for three years; then the youth- ful Tammany Society held a funeral procession around the Yard, placed the bleached fragments in a temporary tomb resembling a toolhouse, and forgot about them. Those patriots whose bones were not salvaged at that time were buried deeper as subsequent commandants enlarged the Yard by filling in the bay. Still later, excavations were made for drydocks and building foundations. Almost invariably the excavators struck bones. For a whIle it was the practice to pile them uncere- moniously in the makeshift vault, but presently a number of Brooklyn societies began to agitate for a more impressive memorial. The city finally built one, known as the Martyrs' Tomb, in Fort Greene Park. The monument was un- veiled in 1908 with a ceremony that included a funeral for an assortment of skulls and bones probably once belong- ing to the patriots. The next spring, additional bones were found at the Yard and there was another ceremonial pro- cession to the Martyrs' Tomb. When three batches were turned up in the summer of the same year, enthusiasm decreased, although the burial services continued: a precedent had been estab- lished. During the World \Var there was much construction at the Yard and Marines on duty there complained that life seemed one long funeral detail. But the Navy could see no other fitting way out, and funerals have continued sporadically during each new period of excavation. According to one account published soon after the Revolution, 10,664 prisoners were buried there. In that case there should be the remains of about ten thousand patriots still some- where on the grounds. Commodore Matthew Perry, who was Commandant of the Yard from 1841 to 1843, was the man responsible for a complete change in American "W here's the fire?" <<ttUTfHEK naval strategy. A few years after leav- ing the old commandant's house, he sailed across the Pacific and forced the Japanese to open their ports to Western trade. If he had let them alone, the main body of the :fleet might still be based on the Atlantic Coast, and the great ships built at the Yard could come home occasionally instead of spending most of their time between San Pedro and Pearl Harbor. Four of the Navy's fifteen capital shIps-the New York, New Mexico, Arizona, and Tennessee- were built in Brooklyn, but they are sel- dom seen in these waters any more. There should be a bit of the old-time spirit at the Yard next May if plans go through to bring the entire :fleet East for some sort of display at the World's Fair. T HERE is still a sailmakers' shop at the Yard, although the last ship built there with sails was the Trenton, completed in 1 876 and lost thirteen years later In a Samoan hurricane. The sailmakers now work on canvas deck awnings and upholstered seat cushions; that's about all there is left for them to do. The important craftsmen today are the machinists, riveters, sheet-metal workers, electricians, drop-forge opera- tors, locomotive engineers, and others whose trades were unknown to the early commandants of the Yard. There are twenty-two workshops, many with ceil- ings higher than churches and with small railroads running down the mid- dle of their insides. Locomotives chug about the place, fires :flare in forges and furnaces, and men with hammers fit beautifully curved blades into turbines that will drive boats over thirty knots. In a loft not far from the boiler shop more than a score of middle-aged women stitch away at electric sewing machines, turning out ensigns for the :flag lockers of battleships. A capital ship must carry more than a hundred different flags: thirty-seven signal pennants, a naval en- sign of every country the ship is like- ly to visit, and a collection of boat flags, admirals' :flags, and :flags to salute various officials who may come aboard. Some of the women in the loft think each foreign ensign should be em broi- dered, as a mark of respect to the power it represents, but the Navy just paints them with a stencil to sa ve money. Moreover, the Russians and Germans change their naval ensigns so often that if every totalitarian whim were gratifi ed with hand em broidery, the sewing de- partmen t would be too large an item in the Navy's budget. Building a ship like the North Car- olina is a four-year job and the number